Eyes of Pale Gold
by Pamela Eaton
Summary: Training alone in the desert leads Temari to realize she'll never really be alone. Spoilers pre-episode 81 only. No Pairing. Stand alone.


Note: This was writen for a 100 theme list on LJ, which means if I write all the stories in the challange there will be 100 of them eventually. This was the first I wrote, despite being the 51st theme. Other themes will have pairings for Temari. Some will be in seperate over-all arc. Not all will follow one single continuity (for example I plan to have multiple pairings for Temari to explore each of the possibilities I invision.) 

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Title**: Eyes of Pale Gold Fandom: Naruto

**Characters**: Temari

**Theme**: #051. Dancing all alone

**Leitmotif**: Wind (My leitmotif is CHEAP considering the character)

**Warnings/Ratings**: None/K+; Mostly introspective. Nothing graphic.

**Disclaimer**: Characters and world belong to Kishimoto-san and all his affiliates. I do take some creative liberties with it, but otherwise I try to give it back when I'm done and play somewhere else. No profit, no desire for profit.

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The desert sand was coarse and rough, but the sandals on her feet kept her from feeling the majority of it. Still, a thin line had managed to slip into the material, the crystalline fragments pressing into the padded skin of her feet, threatening to leave a permenant impression. Someone else from another country might have found such a thing quite uncomfortable, but Temari, a Sand Ninja of the Wind Country, was so accustomed that the presence of the sand didn't bother her, no matter what part of her it managed to creep up against. Movement was easy for her, even with the sand threatening to shift under her feet on top of the dune she had chosen. She knew how far she could move towards the edge with the added weight of herself and her fan. As long as she kept the proper distance, there would be no risk of losing her footing and having her training interrupted.

The training would, to an untrained eye, have looked quite odd; it would not have appeared to be something classified as training. The sunrise stretched her shadow far down the dune, no clouds to obscure the light. The air was still cool enough from the nightly chill that cover was not needed to protect against the heat. As she moved, a breeze picked up the sand around her, pulling it into the air to drift around her, the small tendrils only visible because of the debris carried along around her. The growing light was caught on her skin, glittering against the sweat that had built up in specific. The muscles of her arms were uncovered for the moment; her mesh stripped off and placed inside the sash around her waist. Those muscles were what were being exercised.

With each movement, the burden of her fan was lifted and hauled along; the heavy metal taking flight in tenuous arcs, a beautiful threat that would have battered anyone who had stepped within the four foot reach. Temari was strength training. The added weight to her fan since they had returned to the Sand Village had required retraining of her muscles in preparation for preparing new jutsus. The metal frame was denser than before, sturdier, but also much heavier. The muscles still burned, but no longer ached as much as she practiced. Soon she would be able to train her wind skills with new fan, but for the moment, the strength training was paramount.

Days ago no one would have mistaken this training for anything else. The grace had not been as advanced as it was now. This moment, though, it appeared as if a dance were occurring, a graceful dance that concealed the viciousness that the weapon would be capable of.

A dance which was interrupted as the sun finally breached the top of the horizon.

A few feet from where Temari still danced, the sand started to rise up out of the dune. Even with the threat of attack unlikely, her careful guard was enough that she noticed immediately and stopped moving, the hand held carefully in place before her as she watched the sand rise up. Any caution she might have felt vanished in moments as she saw what shape it was forming into.

It rose up until it would only barely reach her shoulders, shaping carefully into the form of a person, a young boy with short, spiky hair. The finer details of his face formed more slowly, until every feature matched what it was based off of. Even the character was present on his forehead, superimposed above what would have been his skin so that it was visible.

For a long moment, Temari just watched the figure as it stood there. It crossed her mind that this could be a warning of an attack, but the wind carried no sounds of danger. Surely there had to have been a reason for the Sand bushin to have been created. Such thoughts disappeared as the bushin of her younger brother and teammate reached a hand up towards her. The sad expression on that face had been easily ignored before. . .

The wind hadn't stopped picking up sand from the ground, and some of it began to gather on top of her feet as she stood still. The figure before her didn't breathe nor move, but it looked as alive to her as the real thing, the glittering pale golden eyes looked up at her with a depth of sorrow she hadn't imagined could be conveyed by such a thing. It may have been her imagination. The fan she held one-handed dug into the sand dune near her feet as she lifted a hand up to place over the rough palm.

As the solid seeming hand gripped her own, she glances over her shoulder and towards the horizon. In the distance she could only make out a black shape beside the still low sun, but she knew who it was. As she watched, the form turned around and started to walk away, the feeling in her hand lost solidity, the figure breaking down and sliding through her fingers. It had disappeared into a small pile by the time her eyes left the retreating figure to look down.

A smile formed on her lips. As she began to move again, training continuing, she suddenly did not feel alone anymore as her feet brushed over the sand.


End file.
